Monday, March 30, 2009

Obama authorizes more debt spending in 45 days than Ronald Reagen did in eight years

The Congressional Budget Office found that the ten year deficits of the Obama Administration plan will be about $2.3 trillion higher than the $6.97 trillion the White House has projected. Can the US withstand that level of debt? We expect this level of debt from Argentina, Bolivia, and Mexico, but they are considered countries at risk of debt default. If the current level of spending continues, this country may go broke trying to service the debt. How can our children and grandchildren ever hope to pay this off?

In his press conference last Tuesday, Barack Obama said that America must reject the "borrow and spend" policies of the past in favor of a strategy of "save and invest." Sounds good. So why is Obama proposing to borrow and spend more than any president in the history of the republic? Already in the first 45 days of his administration, the federal government has authorized more debt spending than Ronald Reagan did in eight years in office.

Then last week the Democrats' own Congressional Budget Office found that the ten-year deficits of the Obama plan will be about $2.3 trillion higher than the $6.97 trillion the White House is projecting. This is the policy of the party that was swept back into power in 2006 and 2008 promising a return to an era of fiscal responsibility.

Welcome to the Obama doctrine. It is built on the high stakes economic gamble that the public and the bond markets will tolerate trillions of dollars of borrowing to pay for massive expansions in government spending on popular income transfer programs. The corollary to this doctrine is that the left will create a political imperative to jack up tax rates to pay for higher spending commitments made today.

But the news on the red ink front is much worse than the president or even the CBO's budget report suggests. If all of Obama's "transformational" policy objectives--from global warming taxes to universal health care to doubling the Department of Energy's budget--are enacted, the debt is likelyto increase from about 40 percent of GDP today to close to 100 percent of GDP by 2018. The ten-year debt is likely to be at least $6 trillion higher--or more than one-half trillion of higher deficits a year from now until forever--than the Obama budget projects.

These are uncharted levels of debt for the United States--though not for such high-flying nations as Argentina, Bolivia, and Mexico. (excerpt) read more at weeklystandard.com